Look around you right now. No, really, look around you. If you are reading this and find yourself all alone, I’m sorry. You may be at work so it would be weird to have someone in the office, or perhaps you’re at the gym and came by yourself. Most of the time I write this at Starbucks and no one else is at my table. The thing is, there’s usually someone in the vicinity even if they are not “with” you. We tend to classify ourselves as being alone even if we are in a crowd when we don’t have someone we know close to us. “Aloneness” gets defined by proximity.

We can get “alone” in a crowd with God when we do church or recovery “stuff” but don’t connect with fellow believers. It can be easy to feel like we have arrived because we have quit that habit or addiction that brought us to our first meeting. If we quit showing up because we don’t need it anymore, we are cheating the other people from benefiting from our experience. We need to keep getting together with people and giving back.

Now look around again. Find a way to close the gap to the person closest to you. When we get closer, we all…

— Rise Up!!